Welcome to Fluency.org! We are a not-for-profit web service provided by The Fluency Project, a Washington State not-for-profit corporation. Our purpose is to disseminate information about behavioral fluency; and to connect people interested in building fluent behavior of all kinds, for all types of people: children, adults, professionals, athletes, musicians...everyone!

We are currently in the process of submitting paperwork to the IRS to qualify as a 501(c)3 corporation so that we can accept tax-deductible contributions. We'll let you know when the process is complete.

This web site was inspired by the accelerating power of Internet communications technology and a growing interest among both laypersons and professionals in fluency research and application.

The groundwork for fluency-based learning and performance improvement methods has been laid in many published articles and chapters, as well as in unpublished and out-of-print papers and reports. As a first stage in the work of Fluency.org, we're going to provide access as widely as possible to as many of those invaluable resources as we can. Tell your friends and colleagues  forward our web link URL (www.fluency.org) to everyone who cares about learning as much as possible as rapidly as possible.

Fluency.org is a work in progress, a one-person operation managed in the webmaster's so-called "spare" time. For now it's a single page containing lists of publications and unpublished documents, conference presentations and handouts, and links to additional resources and organizations on the Web  with lots of downloadable materials in original form. We're actively seeking contributions of documents and other resources (links, video material, etc.) to add to the available online archive, including rigorous graduate student theses and dissertations and unusual experiments or interventions with helpful and convincing data that we can share with others.

We invite researchers, colleagues, students, parents, employers, educators, performance improvement professionals, managers and everyone else to look through our growing collection of resources related to fluency research and development. There's something here for you -- we've got information for just about any audience you can imagine.

We welcome inquiries about potential contributions of time, skill, or money  particularly as we move toward official 501(c)3 tax exempt status.

Please email us with your suggestions, requests and comments at info@fluency.org.

Publications

Barrett, B. H. (1979). Communitization and the measured message of normal behavior. In R. York & E. Edgar (Eds), Teaching the Severely Handicapped, Vol 4. Columbus, OH: Special Press, 301-318. This classic paper is no longer widely available and we're happy to be able to include it here. The late Beatrice Barrett was one of the most articulate advocates of frequency-based instruction and the application of behavior science in education. This chapter, among other things, presents a data set that has been reprinted and presented hundreds of times since, showing how count per minute measures discriminate among levels of competence, whereas percent correct cannot.

Barrett, B. H., Beck, R., Binder, C., et. al (1991). The Right to Effective Education. The Behavior Analyst, 14, 79-82. We recommend this paper to every educational professional, parent, and anyone else who wants to know about the things research says that education should provide. It is a thorough and still-relevant review of what we know from research that should be included in any educational program, including measurement of and methods for building fluency.

Binder, C. (1977-1982). The Data-sharing Newsletter 1977-1982. Waltham, MA: Behavior Prosthesis Laboratory, Walter E. Fernald State School. Republished in 2005 by The Fluency Project, Inc. Originally published as a mimeographed meeting notice and report, this set of 38 newsletters captures many of the early discoveries and developments in Precision Teaching during the period in which it was written. It began as a communication tool for a handful of people in the Boston area who met monthly for "chart-sharing sessions" using the standard celeration chart, it eventually expanded to more than 400 subscribers around North America. Full of ideas that are as important today as they were then.

Binder, C. (1987, September). Computing "Fluency" and Productivity. Managing End-User Computing, 4-5. This one-pager succinctly describes the elements of a learning strategy for building fluent use of computers.

Binder, C. (1990, September). Closing the Confidence Gap. Training, 49-56. Fluency is fun, produces confidence, and brings on a whole host of positive feelings and affect. It feels good to truly "master" and apply any skill or body of knowledge.

Binder, C. (1993, October). Behavioral Fluency: A New Paradigm. Educational Technology, 1993, 8-14. Summary of principles and key research supporting fluency-based instruction, including references to early studies in verbal learning and other traditional areas of experimental psychology.

Binder, C. (1996) Behavioral Fluency: Evolution of a New Paradigm. The Behavior Analyst, 19(2), 163-197. A longer and more academic article about the origins and principles underlying fluency-based instruction. We're told it's more interesting reading than you'd expect!

Binder, C. (2000) Fluency and Remembering. Carl acts as a consultant to the Haughton Learning Center, a program for children that uses methods based on the same principles and methods we use and develop. He wrote this article for the center newsletter.

Binder, C. (2001, March) Measurement: A Few Important Ideas. Performance Improvement, 20-28. While this article is not focused on fluency per se, it provides some background about the measurement principles and tools used in Precision Teaching and standard celeration charting, the methodology that has yielded most of what we currently know about fluency-based instruction.

Binder, C. (2003a, April) Doesn't Everybody Need Fluency? Performance Improvement, 42(3), 14-20. This article lays out the view that we're all trapped in the percentage correct "box" because of our educational histories since childhood, and that we can't get beyond mediocrity to produce true mastery without measuring the time dimension. "It's the measurement, stupid!" is another rude title for this argument. The article also contains a sort of research travelogue and previews key points from Binder's upcoming book called Everybody Needs Fluency!

Binder, C. (2004). In Response: A refocus on response-rate measurement: Comment on Doughty, Chase, and O'Shields (2004). The Behavior Analyst, 27(2), 281-286. This paper was written in response to a review of rate-building research by Doughty, et al, in which the authors introduced errors into the Precision Teaching literature and recommended research designs without explicitly mentioning certain essential measurement components. We have not included the Doughty, et al article on this web site in the absence of permission to do so, but suggest readers request a copy of their article by writing Shannon S. Doughty, the first author, at PSHSSH@srskansas.org.

Binder, C. (2005). Learning, teaching, and an evolutionary imperative. A summary of remarks made by Carl Binder upon receiving the Fred S. Keller Award for Contributions to Behavioral Education. The American Psychological Association Division 25 Recorder, 38 (1), 10-12.

Binder, C., Haughton, E., & Bateman, B. (2002). Fluency: Achieving true mastery in the learning process. Professional Papers in Special Education. University of Virginia Curry School of Special Education (http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/specialed/papers). This paper was prompted by Barbara Bateman, renowned special educator and lawyer, who requested a collaborative effort with the first two authors to make what is known about fluency available in plain English to a broader range of special educators and parents. Covers basic rationale and methodology for building fluency in basic skills.

Binder, C., & Sweeney, L. (2002, February). Building Fluent Performance in a Customer Call Center. Performance Improvement, 41(2), 29-37. A huge success story for fluency-based methods in the corporate environment.. Binder Riha Associates helped ramp up performance to 60% better than the call center benchmark within two weeks after new hire training.

Fox, E.J., and Ghezzi, P.M. (2003). Effects of computer-based fluency training on concept formation. Journal of Behavioral Education, 12(1), 1-21. This study, while suffering from a variety of design flaws, represents an important effort to subject instructional methods using response rate mastery criteria to experimental analysis. Future studies would benefit from within-subject control procedures, a larger set of material to be learned, and possibly higher response rate criteria.

Haughton, E. (1972). Aims  Growing and Sharing. In Jordan, J.B., and Robbins, L.S. (Eds.). Let's Try Doing Something Else Kind of Thing: Behavioral Principles and the Exceptional Child. A report from the Invisible College Conference on Application of Behavioral Principles in Exceptional Child Education, March, 1971. Arlington, VA: The Council for Exceptional Children, 20-39. This inspiring chapter is what started many of us second-generation Precision Teachers on the path toward fluency-based instruction. Eric Haughton summarized the work that he and his associates (notably, Clay Starlin) had done leading to the conclusion that "aims" or count per minute fluency standards should serve as mastery criteria or goals for instruction and practice. In many respects, this chapter says most of what over 30 years later we have merely refined and expanded. It's a huge (6.6 MB) PDF file, but we felt that most readers would consider it worth the time to download because it is so compelling, such a seminal document, and otherwise so hard to obtain.

Johnson, K.R., and Layng, T.V.J. (1992). Breaking the structuralst barrier: Literacy and numeracy with fluency.American Psychologist, 47(11), 1475-1490. This article was the first widely distributed description of the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction, an approach to instruction based on Learning Sciences research and a foundation of fluency development. A classic in the field, well worth reading.

Johnson, K.R., and Street, E.M. (2004). The Morningside Model of Generative Instruction: What it means to leave no child behind. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. This book describes the rationale and components of the Morningside Model, a powerful integration of research-based methods built on a foundation of procedures for building fluent skills and knowledge. This link takes you to Amazon where you can purchase the book.

Kubina, R., & Morrison R. (2000). Fluency in Education. Behavior and Social Issues, 10, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, 83-99. A good plain English discussion of fluency in education, published by a great not-for-profit organization that supports the application of behavior science to practical problems.

Lindsley, O.R. (1991). Precision Teaching's Unique Legacy from B.F. Skinner. Journal of Behavioral Education, 1(2), 253-266. This article summarizes historical inputs to Precision Teaching from Skinner and some of the key features of current practice and language at the time the article was written.

Lindsley, O.R. (1992). Precision Teaching: Discoveries and Effects. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 25(1), 51-57. This summary by the co-founder of Precision Teaching, describes many of the underlying principles and historical developments leading to fluency-based instructional methods.

Lindsley, O.R. (2004). Ogden R. Lindsley (1922-2004): Publications. This is a file containing all known publications of Ogden Lindsley, the founder of Precision Teaching and inventor of the Standard Celeration Chart. References include basic laboratory research prior to development of Precision Teaching.

McGreevy, P. (1983). Teaching and Learning in Plain English: Second Edition. This book is a superb introduction to Precision Teaching and standard celeration charting methods by a long-time master of the methodology, especially applied with children and special education populations. You may purchase the book by clicking on this link.

Starlin, Clay. M. (1979). Evaluating and Teaching Reading to "Irregular" Kids. Iowa Perspective, 1-10. This is a classic article, hard to find anywhere else unless you happen to have a paper copy. It lays out the basics of a Precision Teaching approach to reading. While there are more strategies and pinpoints that might be relevant in some cases (e.g., focus on word attack skills, Elizabeth Haughton's fluency development methods for phonological coding), this is definitely a great place to start.

Zemke, R. (2003b). Training Today Q&A: Building Fluency.Training Magazine, July/August, 14. This one-pager by our old late friend, Ron Zemke (Senior Editor at Training Magazine for years and a great performance improvement professional), is a liberally edited summary of an interview he conducted with Carl Binder so that he could present fluency-based training and coaching in a simple, summary way. A pretty good summary for business decision-makers.

Unpublished Theses, Reports, and White Papers

Desjardins, A. (1980). Letter on Big 6 Fluency Development to Dr. Leslie Wiedenman. For those working with young children and students with fine motor skill deficits, Dr. Eric Haughton's identification of "the big 6" behavior elements (reach, point, touch, grasp, place, release) was a major breakthrough when combined with Precision Teaching methods. This letter is one of the only documents we have that describes methods for developing these skills, sent by long-time practitioner Annie Desjardins to a colleague who requested information. It is a poor scanned copy of a 25-year old document, but is invaluable and still sought out by many teachers and therapists.

Pollard, Jim (1986). Remembrances of Eric Haughton. This compilation of messages and letters was created by Jim Pollard in memory of Eric Haughton, co-founder with Ogden Lindsley of Precision Teaching, shortly after Eric passed away after a long battle with cancer. It presents the picture of a multi-faceted man whose contributions far surpassed his publication list, and whose humanity helped to form the early culture of caring and sharing in Precision Teaching.

Note: We need more time and resources to get all the theses we know about online. Anyone want to help?

Conference Presentations and Handouts (Most recent at top)

Binder, C. (2005). How to plan for program implementation using The Six Boxes Model. 2005 International Precision Teaching Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. This presentation summarizes the simple but powerful Six Boxes model for performance management and suggests how you can use it to plan for program implementation, e.g., homeschool, classroom, or building-level roll-out of a Precision Teaching program. While the Six Boxes methodology was developed and implemented mostly in companies, it is also applicable for educational and human services agencies, and even for families. This PDF file contains live (clickable) links to additional resources on the Worldwide Web.

Binder, C. (2005). R/APS, REAPS, and other acronyms. On a panel chaired by Kent Johnson, with Michael Fabrizio and Elizabeth Haughton, entitled, "Aims: Growing and sharing  What we know about aims and what are the next questions." Presented at the 2005 International Precision Teaching Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. This part of a symposium corrects an historical and conceptual innaccuracy about Haughton's acronyms (R/APS and REAPS), discusses the use of acronyms and their relationship to fluency research, and includes charts illustrating the effects that the acrornyms represent.

Riha, C.A. (2005). Using Precision Teaching in a homeschool setting. 2005 International Precision Teaching Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. In this presentation Cynthia discussed why she decided to homeschool her two boys, what she has been doing with them for the last year, curriculum tips, and other observationns. Great for homeschoolers or parents who want to help their kids.

Fabrizio, M., and Moors, A. (2005). The contributions of the standard celeration chart to intervention planning. Association for Behavior Analysis, Chicago, IL. In this presentation Fabrizio and Moors, two leaders in application of fluency-based educational methods for young students with autism, show how using the standard celeration chart -- Precision Teaching's central tool -- supports more effective measurement, assessment, and evalution in educational programming.

Binder, C. (2004, April 2). Everybody Needs Fluency! for families and professionals serving people with autism and autism spectrum disorders, keynote presentation at the New York Academy of Medicine, Working Together Conference, New York City. A version of the previous presentation intended for parents and professionals involved with persons with autism.

Binder, C., & Sweeney, L. (2002). Fluency coaching accelerates learning and productivity ramp-up. Poster presentation in the GOT RESULTS? exhibit at the annual conference of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), Dallas, Texas, April 24. This presentation described results in a customer service call center in which new hire training was completely re-designed to devote more than half the program time to fluency development. Also cut training time by one third.

Binder, C. (2003). Everybody Needs Fluency! A Master's Series presentation at the annual conference of the International Society for Performance Improvement, April 2003 in Boston, MA. This presentation outlines the arguments for building fluent performance.

Web Links

Binder Riha Associates This firm offers management, performance improvement, and training services that include The FluencyBuilding and Fluency Coaching Workshops. As the original sponsor of Fluency.org, Binder Riha Associates markets commercial applications of standard celeration charting and fluency-based instruction for business as well as other performance improvement products and services.

Celeration Technologies This firm, owned by Dr. Joe Parsons at the University of Victoria (Canada), offers ThinkFast, a program that can be used in Microsoft Windows to deliver fluency exercises on terms and definitions, principles, and other simple verbal material.

Center For Advanced Learning, Inc. This is the web site of CAL, a cutting-edge Precision Teaching learning center in Reno, Nevada. CAL emerged from the University of Nevada program in Behavior Analysis in the Psychology Department, and is now a private learning center serving children and adolescents. Averages 2 years' gain in academic skills per 40 hours in the program. Nick and Kimberly Berens maintain a rich mixture of science and application in their close affiliation with the University.

Fabrizio/Moors Consulting. Michael Fabrizio and Alison Moors are leaders in applying fluency-based instruction in the education of persons with autism. Their new web site contains extremely helpful presentations and publications as well as the promise of even more valuable information in the future.

Measurement Counts! in PerformanceXpress, the online newsletter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) (www.PerformanceXpress.org). Many of the columns related to the underlying measurement approach used in Precision Teaching and standard celeration charting. When you click to go to a specific issue from the links page, be sure to wait until the URL loads fully so that it will scroll down in the newsletter to where the Measurement Counts! column appears.

Morningside Academy Morningside, a school for elementary and middle school children and a teacher-training institute, has existed since 1980 as one of the most well-respected integrators of research-based instructional methodologies in the world. At the foundation of effectiveness at Morningside are methods for measuring and developing fluent skills and knowledge with Precision Teaching. Dr. Kent Johnson, founder and Director of Morningside, has trained hundreds of teachers affecting thousands of children and has developed the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction as a vehicle for disseminating his continuously evolving methodological synthesis.

Precision Teaching Module  Athabasca University. This great online reference and learning module covers Precision Teaching, Ogden Lindsley it's inventor, and basic methods and concepts related to fluency-based instruction. It is a valuable resource that Athabasca University generously makes available to the World.

Standard Celeration Chart and Precision Teaching References. Dr. John Eshleman originally compiled this excellent list of references about Precision Teaching methods and tools and donated it to the Standard Celeration Society (see link below). This link is actually a specific page at the Society's web site, but worth calling out on it's own. While the items on the list are not directly downloadable, it provides a good starting place for serious research related to fluency-based teaching and performance improvement methods.

Teach Your Children Well. Michael Maloney, one of the first to combine Precision Teaching with Direct Instructon teaching methods provides a line of books and educational materials that enable parents, home schoolers, teachers, tutors, and others to develop fluent skills in the basic academics.

The Fluency Factory. Begun by a long-time Precision Teaching practitioner and Consultant, Richard McManus, this tutoring center is among the better known fluency-based learning centers for children.

The Haughton Learning Center. Once a world renowned Precision Teaching learning center in Napa, California, The Haughton Learning Center has become primarily a publisher of learner validated Precision Teaching programs. Elizabeth Haughton, it's founder, is a specialist in foundation academic and language skills for children, and perhaps the most long-time continuous practitioner of Precision Teaching still active today.

The Learning Incentive and Ben Bronz Academy. This school and provider of online services in West Hartford, CT, is one of the foremost providers of fluency-based educational methods for students with learning challenges, founded in 1983 by Aileen Stan-Spence, Ph.D., and Ian Spence, Ph.D.

The Standard Celeration Society This is the home of researchers and practitioners who use the Standard Celeration Chart and Precision Teaching  the original form of fluency-based learning and teaching for children and adults. The Society publishes a journal, lists resources, and offers an email list server for discussion about Precision Teaching and standard celeration charting.

Time Timer web site. This site sells both large mechanical timers that you can use to make the passage of time visible and a CD with programs for Mac or WIndows that put a nice analog timer on the screen. (We use them for timed activities in group training workshops.)

Owen White's EDSP 510 - Classroom Measurement and Management. This is another rare find, a web site thoughtfully put together by a world expert on Precision Teaching and fluency-based instruction, for his university course. It contains a remarkable overview and class-by-class syllabus, online readings and assignments, and a variety of tools. Truly invaluable, especially for anyone doing Precision Teaching with special education students. The World owes the University of Washington a debt for allowing us to access this site.

Scott Born's Excel Standard Celeration Chart Web Page. Scott Born and Stuart Harder have developed versions of the Standard Celeration Chart -- the basic Precision Teaching measurement tool -- for MIcrosoft Office/Excel. While they take a certain amount of skill with Excel to use, these charts are among the most accessible computerized versions of the chart that we have at this time.